Ashes
by Dark Raven Wrote
Summary: Magical creatures are being smuggled. When Harry is sent to recover a dragon from Knockturn Alley, he isn't prepared for what he finds in that basement. At least now he knows how 'The Artisans' got their name. Dark!fic. Warnings inside. HPCreatures '13


**Prompt:** Please see the end notes. First, I didn't follow it as closely as I would have liked and, secondly, there's a massive give-away I didn't want to give away. If you're tempted to scroll down...don't. The prompter was anonymous. Whoever you are, thank you, even though this is most definitely inot/i what you were expecting, nor what you wanted. This doesn't have a happy ending BUT! If I do pick it back up, I assure you there is one in my head…*looks away guiltily* This really isn't the fic I thought it was going to be. So I apologise to you but I hope you aren't too disappointed.

**A/N:** I might come back to this. I wrote this and then had this massive thing that woke up in my head (which might even have a vaguely happy ending) but there was no time to write it and just. Maybe I will one day. But then maybe I won't. I'm not sure where this came from. The prompt - by anon which can be found at the end of the fic (don't want to give a key detail away) - didn't sound ridiculously dark and sinister and then I sat down and wrote this and then worried and self-doubted and just...panicked for a while.

I hope you enjoy - or at least appreciate - my first stroll into Dark!Fic as I've never strayed this far from the lit road before. Review and Concrit are welcome.

Standard Disclaimer applies.

**Rating**: M

**WARNINGS!:** Dark!Fic. Body horror. Non Consensual body alteration. Gore. Post-torture descriptions.

**With thanks:** To eidheann_writres for beta'ing, even though I didn't have time to do a lot of the stuff she suggested and was probably quite right about. She was great as usual. And to wyvern, for cheerleading me through own personal Halloween nightmare.

**Ashes by Darkravenwrote**

His mouth tastes like ashes and his skin tingles forebodingly. But Ron is a reassuring and constant presence a single step behind him and Kingsley had proclaimed it a 'routine assignment' as they had scurried from his office towards their designated floo.

So he should feel like this is just another inspection raid. _Should _being the operative word. None of this stops the hairs on his arms from standing on end, though, or the wind that whistles around, accompanying their two-man cell down the narrow stairway, from sounding like souls shrieking.

"There's been several reports of incidents related to dragon activity underground in Knockturn Alley," Kingsley had said, shuffling the relevant files to neatness before sliding them across his sparse desk. "We've tracked the location to the basement level of number thirteen, on the corner."

"What type of incidents, sir?" Ron had asked dutifully, when Kingsley had raised his eyebrows expectantly. It's part of their procedure, that they all pretend neither Harry nor Ron have done enough creature extractions to write the book.

Looking back this time, Harry will think it lulls him into a false sense of security. And, yes it is a given, that the acidic scents Kingsley claims witnesses have been describing and the smoking drains are exactly the sort of red warning lights that usually end in fiery maws and near escapes. But this time. This time it just doesn't settle right on Harry's shoulders - there's a heaviness that is so much stronger than the general stress and strain that always comes with planning and executing a new raid.

And when they slip through the empty archway at the base of the stairs - following a flurry of confused hand signals and exaggerated eye-widening that is their typical, haphazard way of figuring out their next move - it doesn't take Harry long to find out why his senses are tingling and fidgeting beneath his bristling skin.

It was no secret in the auror department that one of their top priorities was to put a stop, with swift justice and precision targeting, to the underground trafficking magical creatures. The irony of it is that they probably wouldn't have even known anything was going on if not for the creatures themselves being all around nuisances to their captors. Apparently enslaving a kelpie or trying to collar a vampire was a seriously tricky business when said creature didn't want to stay caught. The problem was severe and deadly: pixies obliterating buildings with their mischief; werewolves, separated from their safe-houses and potions, rampaging in the nights; hippogryffs savaging unsuspecting humans in their anger at capture.

There had been deaths.

Many of them. Including several of Harry's colleagues.

But there is one ring, a particularly nasty branch of the operation, that comes to light. A group that call themselves 'The Artisans'. Once Harry heard what they were doing, the name sounded even more ridiculous. Sickening. Horrific. Grace turned to slaughter.

And here is the evidence before him.

"Harry?" Kingsley had warned as they had swept from the room, his voice quiet and serious but promising only a moments dawdling. Harry knows that it isn't a coincidence that Ron had already left the room. "It should be routine but...Be careful. Intel says Killjoy Hollowheart is currently somewhere in London."

Harry had known, as he watched Ron's coat tails flap down the hallway, that it was more than a warning. Kingsley thought the Artisans were involved. And if he thought something was true then it usually was.

For all the previous aurors who had run into the Artisans, their bad luck had been fatal.

But budgets were low, sightings didn't expressly indicate involvement and Harry knew he and Ron would be going in as their usual two-man team without evidential proof and hundreds of inches of parchment to go with it.

His brain had catalogued it under 'details', but now, looking at the chaos that has been left in their wake, he wishes he had filed it under a more suitable magnitude.

Perhaps it's the single beam of moonlight – a full moon, because no horrific stereotype could be missing – the shines through the misted window in one corner of the room. Or the thick, grimy smoke that wafts perpetually near their feet, dark and dank and dangerous. Maybe it's the shrieking wind that's suddenly silent, like the quiet before the massacre. Or the murmured groaning that has picked up but sounds nothing like a human voice and sends shivers shooting down Harry's spine. And then there's the cold, the freezing frost biting at his fingertips and toes even through his clothing and that makes his breath ghost from his parched lips.

Whatever it is, it engulfs him in a fear he hasn't felt since his first job alone. It brings back the shivers he can barely conceal and the itching prickle, persistent, at the base of his spine that clings and the quivering at his temples where light, filmy sweat is gathering there which makes his jaw clench and ache. His grasp on his wand is tight, unwisely so, and the Oculos Lux charm that wisps over his eyes is abruptly more like insects crawling and scuttling than the usual soothing heat. And rather than butterflies accompanying him through the woods of a routine assignment, his stomach is now filled to bursting with dread wolves savaging each other and his innards in a fighting ring. It makes his throat feel tight and his lungs feel breathless but overflowing with spoilt air all at once.

It makes him feel ill. Like the evil left behind in this room is a rotting disease, an affliction that is spreading on the backs of rabid rats and has already bitten into his skin, even though he has only been in the room mere seconds.

Ron is quaking beside him minutely, refusing to lose control of his body.

Harry shuffles further into the room. It's actually rather barren, all decaying wood and slate flooring that is caked in musty dust and clinging cobwebs. It's a broad 'L' shape and when they pause at the corner, mindful not to touch the crumbling and stained brickwork, the smell that hits them nearly has Harry doubling over at the stomach and gagging.

It's stale like sweat and old piss, sweat and tangy like blood, noxious and thick like shit. All at once. Overpowering. Pervasive. Hitting the back of his throat and clogging there. Raw.

It smells like imprisonment and anguish. Like death and hell.

And it's only the image that burns itself into his eyes, and flares there even once he's slammed them shut, that freezes last nights dinner in his belly.

Skeletal. Crimson. Folded into the black smoke that curls poisonously from the ground near its head.

Harry thinks this is what a Dementor must looks like without its shielding cloak. Like a corpse, all sharp angles and sagging skin, slashed and bloody and tormented until the end.

It's human, all right, though. Or it _was. _A swell of sympathy and bile rise up his trachea when he realised the poor thing is still alive, the monstrous tangle of charred bone sprawled atop the fragile body shifting with each tortured breath.

An arctic surge of dread slithers through his veins when the realisation crushes down on him. Horrific.

The bones aren't quivering because they're on top of its body.

They are quivering, shuddering with every inhale, because they are _part _of it. The groaning - a low rumble now that they are closer, which vibrates so deeply that sometimes it can't be heard, only seen in the way it throbs through the walls and causes crumbling cement to come loose as powder into the still air- is coming from them. But as Harry listens more intently, it becomes less like a human sound and more like the creaking of an old oak wood. Ever angry, ever pained, the moans echoing and harmonising eternally, justified. Sombre.

They are charred, blackened by rot, and crumbling. The unpleasant scent of purification rises from the whirls of smoke, and when Harry finds the place where ugly, discoloured bone meets mottled and dirty skin, he sees why. The infection is blazing; putrid, thick yellow pus and the watered down brown of fetid, old blood seep slowly from the wound, dripping into the depths of pitch fog that covers the floor. With each shift of its body, more of the liquid oozes forth, crawling over three stark knobs of spine before being stolen by gravity.

He wishes he had kept his eyes closed.

He can hear Ron trying to hack up his own lungs back around the corner by the stairs. Bile is rising in his own throat, acidic, but he somehow clamps it down. The professional auror in him demands more information over the screaming human side of his mind.

He steps closer, adamantly ignoring the wet squelch under his uniform shoes and the moistness in this section of the air, the cloying closeness that makes him want to run and leave this hellish place behind.

Limbs – crooked, broken in several places. Skins – grey tinted, sagging from the skeleton where muscle and fat used to find its home. Injuries – multiple, miraculous that it hadn't bled out by now.

His auror has started cataloguing, left to run his body on automatic while the delicate, emotional side of him retreats to gather itself. Puncture marks, all bubbling sluggishly with the same dull brown blood, dot every area of it...him. Including the genitalia where it lies flaccidly against one gaunt thigh, lank pubic hair bloody at the base.

The foul mass atop his head, which Harry can just see through the shield of rumbling bones, is lighter but dyed by his own bleeding. It's light though, strands of near-white fineness peeking through rebelliously from beneath. And then the bones move, the snap-creak of them shocking and thunderous in the quiet.

They burst outward and he has to stagger backwards to avoid being hit as they strain towards the low ceilings, the joints cracking in and out of place, ash grinding from the crevices.

Harry had suspected. Ever since seeing the attaching wound. But it is quiet something else to actually see it with your own eyes. The Artisans had been here, certainly.

Wings.

There are no leathery scales binding them, protecting them, creating the delicate webbing. There are no hooks or claws extending from the apexes or tips. But the structure is there. Bone and shreds of cartilage fusing the joints and half formed sinew that winds along the dark carbon like dead vines, shedding and disintegrating.

Harry has seen enough dragons, fought them even, to know how their wings are formed. How they work, how they move. And even though this is just a haggard husk of the real thing, this is them.

Despite the audible jagged fractures and the patchy black and white stains that make them look like they've been ravaged by hellfire and unnatural angles where some of the spines spike out of place, he can tell. It's the way they flex like there could be powerful muscle coiling and wrapping around the delicate structure, strengthening them, providing them some false illusion of grace.

But they aren't. They are monstrous and take Harry back to memories he thought he had locked away. Memories of graveyards and statues that chill the blood in his veins.

They look like death incarnate.

Soft whining whispers from beneath the constant rumbling and it draws Harry's attention higher. Past the hollow pits and valleys of his ribcage and spine, past the sharpness of emaciated shoulder blades and settling on the lank thatch of overgrown, sullied hair.

And it's the face that finally weakens his cast-iron stomach and his dependable gag reflex. It's near gaunt beyond recognition, cheekbones severe like blades and cheeks sunken like a corpse. Much of his upper face is the violent purple of fresh bruises or the sickly, citrus yellow of ageing ones.

But Harry knows that face. Has spent a long time watching it, memorising the subtle tells of an untruth and the shadows of deceit. Years worth of observation has him recognising the cut of his jaw and the jut of his nose. Even the brow bone which houses the eyebrows that curve ever so slightly with his sneer. It's all warped, mutilated, but familiar.

And it has him turning his back and heaving.

Because Draco Malfoy is behind him. Scarred. Wrecked. _Destroyed._

Broken.

With the burning acid that comes from his stomach and splatters on the dirty floor, disturbing the thick, black smog that he had just _seen_ leaking lazily from _Draco Malfoy's mouth_, comes a scorching, blistering rush of pity.

* * *

**Prompt:** The aurors are tracking a group who is transporting and selling magical finally get a lead about a dragon being smuggled out, image Harry's surprise when they find a chained up Draco Malfoy. - anon

_I'm not really sure what to say about this. It happened. I'm dealing. Let me know if I've scarred anyone for life. Sorry for the ending, anon prompter, but it just didn't want to be cheerful._

_Reviews and Concrit would be great. I've never written a dark!fic before._

_Bella_


End file.
